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In the grocery store today, we had one of those really classic parenting moments.

Alex pointed to a package of Always Maximum Protection Super Giant-Sized sanitary pads Michael had just put on the checkstand and asked, in her clear, piercing three-year-old voice, "What are those?"

"Those are Mama's," Michael said.

So she turned to me. "Mama, what are those?"

"Those are pads for me to use after the baby is born," I told her.

"What are they for, for after the baby is born?" she persisted. I could see ears perking up all along the checkout line.

Fortunately, Really Classic Parenting Moments have ready-made Really Classic Parenting Answers.

"I'll tell you when we're in the car," I said. And all along the checkout line, disappointed heads turned away.

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It wasn't an easy question to answer in the car, either, because the freakout potential is pretty high. But I did my best, focusing on the fact that I wouldn't be bleeding because I was hurt.

Heh, I've explained "placenta" to Linnea as "baby food which looks like blood, in a sort of bag" and postnatal bleeding as "all the spare we don't need because she's outside now."

We made models of uteri and placentas with our hands, recently. It was part of explaining menstruation. She liked the part where I opened my cupped hands and the baby fell out, followed by her cupped hands representing the placenta. We chickened out at cutting the cord though and stuck with "when it's time it falls off."

Which is *true*. Somewhere.

If you leave it long enough, it DOES fall off on its own.

Of course, you're trucking a placenta around with the kid that whole time, trying to keep it clean ... which is icky. So nobody does anymore. But one COULD.

Yeah, I figured it was close enough to the truth to be ok; just because it practically never happens doesn't mean it's not TRUE.

Also, I couldn't handle telling her that it gets cut with scissors or a knife. She found the c-section quite alarming enough.

Huh, I didn't even think of that being potentially scary. (C-section, on the other hand, I can totally see freaking a kid out.) The awesome book we have (It's Not the Stork (http://www.amazon.com/Its-Not-Stork-Families-Friends/dp/0763600474)) matter-of-factly explains that the cord is cut because the baby doesn't need it anymore, and that cutting it doesn't hurt the mother or the baby. And we've discussed that Niblet will still have a little piece of his cord attached.

If you don't have a copy of Where Did I Come From? (http://www.amazon.com/Where-Did-Come-Peter-Mayle/dp/0818402539/) yet, I highly, highly, highly recommend it.

And not just for the hilariously cheerful sperm in top hats on the endpapers.

So nobody does anymore.

Oh, you'd like to BELIEVE that's true. Google "lotus birth."

I wonder how many people in the line were thinking something like, "If I catch this, maybe I'll know what to do when my kid asks that."

Edited 2009-01-25 22:05 (UTC)

That's what I'm thinking...

Well, then, let me think. I believe I said, "For a couple of weeks after the baby is born, I'm going to have some bleeding. It won't be because I'm hurt - it will be leftover blood coming out of my uterus. I'll wear pads in my underpants to catch the blood. It won't hurt me when I bleed."

Then she asked, "What if the blood comes from the middle of your uterus?", and I explained that whichever part of my uterus the blood comes from, it will all come out through my vagina.

It was helpful to have the time from checking out to getting in the car, to figure out what I wanted to say. She hasn't noticed anything about menstruation yet, so the only context she has for blood is injury.

Ha! I used to have a co-worker (at Planned Parenthood) whose daughter found a package of pads in the bathroom, and asked what they were. S must have been distracted / in a hurry, and told her "those are for when you're a big girl."

A month later, S was cleaning the daughter's room, and found several pads, paper backing peeled off, stuck to the wall in the closet. When she asked her daughter what they were doing there, the inevitable answer was "well, you're always telling me what a big girl I am now." :)

A small person of my acquaintance decided the pantiliners with wings she found were butterfly stickers and put them on the glass storm door 'for pretty'.

The neighbors, a retirement home full of Seventh Day Adventists, called her mother and said 'Um. Err. You should go look at your front door. Um.'

My daughter calls them "mommie diapers".

*SNORT* Oh dear. :)

Ack! Cute!

It's probably a really good thing that you don't post these things on tumblr because I'd be a reblogging fiend and my whole blog would be just stories you've posted about Alex.

Someone one else said that the perked ears may just have been tuned to advice - I'm sure mine would have been. But how mortifying! I suppose when you have a three-year-old you aren't allowed to be publicly mortifiable anymore, but still!

You handled it with all the class and grace I'm accustomed to on your blog!

When I was about 6 or 7 I was walking home down the hill with my mother, past the shops and houses, with cars all along the road, zooming on by. The elastic on her knickers (underpants) snapped and they fell down to her knees. She hitched them up carefully without exposing herself, did something at her waistband to secure them, and kept going.

"What happened?"
"My pants fell down, so I fixed them."
"But isn't that REALLY EMBARRASSING?"
"By the time you've had five children," she said, "it takes more than that to embarrass you."

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